Saying “I told you so” seems like it might be cathartic… but really, most of the time you end up saying it, it’s because something bad — foreseeable, but bad — happened. Wouldn’t you rather just not have the bad thing happen in the first place?
That’s how I feel about Joel Payamps. The Braves apparently felt confident enough to give him a guaranteed, non-league minimum deal in the offseason, and I just didn’t get it. Payamps barely made it to May with the Braves, and after they cut bait, no one else
bothered. Sure, I told you so… but it’d have been better if they just went in another direction in the first place.
How Acquired
The moribund 2025 Atlanta Braves claimed Payamps on waivers during the twilight of their horrible season. Though Payamps could have been retained given his lack of service time, the Braves opted to remove him from the 40-man roster in November, and he elected free agency. But, about two weeks later, the Braves handed him a one-year, $2.25 million contract.
What were the expectations?
A 32-year-old right-hander from the Dominican Republic, Payamps has been well-traveled as a journeyman relief arm. He was originally signed as an international free agent by the Rockies, released and signed by the Diamondbacks, had a stint in DFA/waiver limbo with the Red Sox and Blue Jays, got traded to the Royals, got claimed by the Athletics, oh, and somewhere in there he found an opportunity to be involved in the yes-some-people-are-still-super-mad-about-it trade that sent Sean Murphy to the Braves and William Contreras to the Brewers. (Payamps went from Oakland to Milwaukee in the deal.) The Brewers held on to him for a few seasons, including a post-trade breakout, but moved on late in 2025.
When you have a transactions log like Payamps, it suggests that there’s enough to draw interest, but not enough for a team to really fight to keep you. His career stats suggest the same: Payamps came into the 2026 season with 2.2 fWAR in 269 career innings and an 81/95/100 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-). That’s actually a pretty solid line for a low-leverage arm, but as you can see, no one was really all that invested in permanently employing it.
Perhaps the bigger issue was that of that 2.2 fWAR, over half came in a 2023 breakout as the Brewers worked their magic. Payamps hurled 70 2/3 innings in 2023, earning 1.5 fWAR with a 59/79/83 line. 2024 was notably worse, but still solid… but the worm turned in 2025, which is why the Brewers eventually just sent him packing in September.
Put all this together, and Payamps was projected for somewhere between replacement level (Steamer) and “playable but below average” (ZiPS). I don’t really know what about any of this convinced the Braves to give him a guaranteed major league deal, but that’s what happened. (I won’t pretend it was the two outings he had for the Braves in very late 2025, either.) I guess the Braves expected him to be a middle reliever, but the why of it all is still pretty hazy.
2026 Results
Payamps made it just about a month with the Braves. He made his season debut in the second game of the season, and was designated for assignment on May 1. In that span, he appeared in 12 games, completed 7 2/3 innings, bled -0.1 fWAR and was saddled with -0.58 WPA while pitching to a ghastly 196/138/116 line. His performance included one shutdown and four meltdowns: basically, he was used in something other than low leverage five times, and four of those went really poorly. (The Braves went 2-3 in those five games.)
I’m honestly not really sure what else to say here — Payamps just wasn’t around long enough, but that was sort of a blessing given how bad he was during the month that he hung around in the bullpen.
What went right?
His sweeper command was non-terrible? His four-seamer had a .191 wOBA-against and .247 xwOBA-against with a pretty high whiff rate?
It’s hard to say anything goes right when you melt down a bunch in the span of a month, and no one even gives you a minor league shot after you get DFAed.
I guess we can talk about Payamps’ sole shutdown of the season. He worked the eighth with the Braves holding a two-run lead over the Phillies on April 24, and got three flyouts to right, with an Alec Bohm single in there too.
What went wrong?
It’s hard to really diagnose issues in detail in the span of 12 outings. Payamps’ sweeper had crazy spin deflection, and he threw it at the bottom edge of the zone. However, its shape was lacking, and that may be why it didn’t miss many bats: when your sweeper both sweeps and drops less than average, it may not work as well. That said, he probably could’ve survived past May given the success he was having with his four-seamer despite some pretty terrible mechanics on the pitch… but the specific sequence of the batters he faced and the pitches he made (or didn’t make) gave him an ugly line without any really blatant markers in his plate discipline stats or otherwise for why things were so bad so fast.
In the end, there’s no question that a walk rate of 11 percent is pretty much unlivable unless you’re a strikeout demon, and that a combination of poor shape on one pitch and awful command of another is a combination worthy of a one-way ticket to DFAVille, and that’s pretty much what happened. The fact that Payamps couldn’t luck his way through more than one of his higher-leverage outings just made that ticket get issued faster.
Payamps’ worst outing WPA-wise was his last. He came into the eighth with a one-run lead. Kerry Carpenter greeted him with a barreled triple. Matt Vierling followed with a weak roller of a double. Payamps walked a guy, then struck out a guy. That was it — Aaron Bummer and Jose Suarez made things even worse from there, and the Braves lost 5-2. Payamps got shown the proverbial door the next day.
2027 Outlook
It’d be one thing if Payamps had signed a minor league deal somewhere and worked on getting back to his 2023-2024 form in Triple-A somewhere. But, that didn’t happen. As such, it’s not clear whether this is it for the journeyman, or whether he’ll try to latch on somewhere ahead of Spring Training or whatever its equivalent is next season. His situation isn’t really that much worse after 2026 than it was after 2025, and he was able to get $2.25 million from someone (the Braves) after 2025, so… there’s probably a path to at least short-term employment for him somewhere if he wants it. He just shouldn’t expect anyone to pony up a guarantee this time.
